The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (180 page)

ARCHIBALD THE UNPLEASANT

The house of Bastable was once in poor, but honest, circs. That was when it lived in a semi-detached house in the Lewisham Road, and looked for treasure. There were six scions of the house who looked for it—in fact there were seven, if you count Father. I am sure he looked right enough, but he did not do it the right way. And we did. And so we found a treasure of a great-uncle, and we and Father went to live with him in a very affluent mansion on Blackheath—with gardens and vineries and pineries and everything jolly you can think of. And then, when we were no longer so beastly short of pocket-money, we tried to be good, and sometimes it came out right, and sometimes it didn’t. Something like sums.

And then it was the Christmas holidays—and we had a bazaar and raffled the most beautiful goat you ever saw, and we gave the money to the poor and needy.

And then we felt it was time to do something new, because we were as rich as our worthy relative, the uncle, and our Father—now also wealthy, at least, compared to what he used to be—thought right for us; and we were as good as we could be without being good for nothing and muffs, which I hope no one calling itself a Bastable will ever stoop to.

So then Oswald, so often the leader in hazardous enterprises, thought long and deeply in his interior self, and he saw that something must be done, because, though there was still the goat left over, unclaimed by its fortunate winner at the Bazaar, somehow no really fine idea seemed to come out of it, and nothing else was happening. Dora was getting a bit domineering, and Alice was too much taken up with trying to learn to knit. Dicky was bored and so was Oswald, and Noël was writing far more poetry than could be healthy for any poet, however young, and H.O. was simply a nuisance. His boots are always much louder when he is not amused, and that gets the rest of us into rows, because there are hardly any grown-up persons who can tell the difference between his boots and mine. Oswald decided to call a council (because even if nothing comes of a council it always means getting Alice to drop knitting, and making Noël chuck the poetical influences, that are no use and only make him silly), and he went into the room that is our room. It is called the common-room, like in colleges, and it is very different from the room that was ours when we were poor, but honest. It is a jolly room, with a big table and a big couch, that is most useful for games, and a thick carpet because of H.O.’s boots.

Alice was knitting by the fire; it was for Father, but I am sure his feet are not at all that shape. He has a high and beautifully formed instep like Oswald’s. Noël was writing poetry, of course.

“My dear sister sits

And knits,

I hope to goodness the stocking fits,”

was as far as he had got.

“It ought to be ‘my dearest sister’ to sound right,” he said, “but that wouldn’t be kind to Dora.”

“Thank you,” said Dora, “You needn’t trouble to be kind to me, if you don’t want to.”

“Shut up, Dora!” said Dicky, “Noël didn’t mean anything.”

“He never does,” said H.O., “nor yet his poetry doesn’t neither.”

“And his poetry doesn’t either,” Dora corrected; “and besides, you oughtn’t to say that at all, it’s unkind——”

“You’re too jolly down on the kid,” said Dicky.

And Alice said, “Eighty-seven, eighty-eight—oh, do be quiet half a sec.!—eighty-nine, ninety—now I shall have to count the stitches all over again!”

Oswald alone was silent and not cross. I tell you this to show that the sort of worryingness was among us that is catching, like measles. Kipling calls it the cameelious hump, and, as usual, that great and good writer is quite correct.

So Oswald said, “Look here, let’s have a council. It says in Kipling’s book when you’ve got the hump go and dig till you gently perspire. Well, we can’t do that, because it’s simply pouring, but——”

The others all interrupted him, and said they hadn’t got the hump and they didn’t know what he meant. So he shrugged his shoulders patiently (it is not his fault that the others hate him to shrug his shoulders patiently) and he said no more.

Then Dora said, “Oh, don’t be so disagreeable, Oswald, for goodness’ sake!”

I assure you she did, though he had done simply nothing.

Matters were in this cryptical state when the door opened and Father came in.

“Hullo, kiddies!” he remarked kindly. “Beastly wet day, isn’t it? And dark too. I can’t think why the rain can’t always come in term time. It seems a poor arrangement to have it in ‘vac.,’ doesn’t it?”

I think every one instantly felt better. I know one of us did, and it was me.

Father lit the gas, and sat down in the armchair and took Alice on his knee.

“First,” he said, “here is a box of chocs.” It was an extra big and beautiful one and Fuller’s best. “And besides the chocs., a piece of good news! You’re all asked to a party at Mrs. Leslie’s. She’s going to have all sorts of games and things, with prizes for every one, and a conjurer and a magic lantern.”

The shadow of doom seemed to be lifted from each young brow, and we felt how much fonder we were of each other than any one would have thought. At least Oswald felt this, and Dicky told me afterwards he felt Dora wasn’t such a bad sort after all.

“It’s on Tuesday week,” said Father. “I see the prospect pleases. Number three is that your cousin Archibald has come here to stay a week or two. His little sister has taken it into her head to have whooping-cough. And he’s downstairs now, talking to your uncle.”

We asked what the young stranger was like, but Father did not know, because he and cousin Archibald’s father had not seen much of each other for some years. Father said this, but we knew it was because Archibald’s father hadn’t bothered to see ours when he was poor and honest, but now he was the wealthy sharer of the red-brick, beautiful Blackheath house it was different. This made us not like Uncle Archibald very much, but we were too just to blame it on to young Archibald. All the same we should have liked him better if his father’s previous career had not been of such a worldly and stuck-up sort. Besides, I do think Archibald is quite the most rotten sort of name. We should have called him Archie, of course, if he had been at all decent.

“You’ll be as jolly to him as you can, I know,” Father said; “he’s a bit older than you, Oswald. He’s not a bad-looking chap.”

Then Father went down and Oswald had to go with him, and there was Archibald sitting upright in a chair and talking to our Indian uncle as if he was some beastly grown-up. Our cousin proved to be dark and rather tall, and though he was only fourteen he was always stroking his lip to see if his moustache had begun to come.

Father introduced us to each other, and we said, “How do you do?” and looked at each other, and neither of us could think of anything else to say. At least Oswald couldn’t. So then we went upstairs. Archibald shook hands with the others, and every one was silent except Dora, and she only whispered to H.O. to keep his feet still.

You cannot keep for ever in melancholy silence however few things you have to say, and presently some one said it was a wet day, and this well-chosen remark made us able to begin to talk.

I do not wish to be injurious to anybody, especially one who was a Bastable, by birth at least if not according to the nobler attributes, but I must say that Oswald never did dislike a boy so much as he did that young Archibald. He was as cocky as though he’d done something to speak of—been captain of his eleven, or passed a beastly exam., or something—but we never could find that he had done anything. He was always bragging about the things he had at home, and the things he was allowed to do, and all the things he knew all about, but he was a most untruthful chap. He laughed at Noël’s being a poet—a thing we never do, because it makes him cry and crying makes him ill—and of course Oswald and Dicky could not punch his head in their own house because of the laws of hospitableness, and Alice stopped it at last by saying she didn’t care if it was being a sneak, she would tell Father the very next time. I don’t think she would have, because we made a rule, when we were poor and honest, not to bother Father if we could possibly help it. And we keep it up still. But Archibald didn’t know that. Then this cousin, who is, I fear, the black sheep of the Bastables, and hardly worthy to be called one, used to pull the girls’ hair, and pinch them at prayers when they could not call out or do anything to him back.

And he was awfully rude to the servants, ordering them about, and playing tricks on them, not amusing tricks like other Bastables might have done—such as booby-traps and mice under dish-covers, which seldom leaves any lasting ill-feeling—but things no decent boy would do—like hiding their letters and not giving them to them for days, and then it was too late to meet the young man the letter was from, and squirting ink on their aprons when they were just going to open the door, and once he put a fish-hook in the cook’s pocket when she wasn’t looking. He did not do anything to Oswald at that time. I suppose he was afraid. I just tell you this to show you that Oswald didn’t cotton to him for no selfish reason, but because Oswald has been taught to feel for others.

He called us all kids—and he was that kind of boy we knew at once it was no good trying to start anything new and jolly—so Oswald, ever discreet and wary, shut up entirely about the council. We played games with him sometimes, not really good ones, but Snap and Beggar my Neighbour, and even then he used to cheat. I hate to say it of one of our blood, but I can hardly believe he was. I think he must have been changed at nurse like the heirs to monarchies and dukeries.

Well, the days passed slowly. There was Mrs. Leslie’s party shining starrishly in the mysteries of the future. Also we had another thing to look forward to, and that was when Archibald would have to go back to school. But we could not enjoy that foreshadowing so much because of us having to go back at nearly the same time.

Oswald always tries to be just, no matter how far from easy, and so I will say that I am not quite sure that it was Archibald that set the pipes leaking, but we were all up in the loft the day before, snatching a golden opportunity to play a brief game of robbers in a cave, while Archibald had gone down to the village to get his silly hair cut. Another thing about him that was not natural was his being always looking in the glass and wanting to talk about whether people were handsome or not; and he made as much fuss about his ties as though he had been a girl. So when he was gone Alice said—

“Hist! The golden moment. Let’s be robbers in the loft, and when he comes back he won’t know where we are.”

“He’ll hear us,” said Noël, biting his pencil.

“No, he won’t. We’ll be the Whispering Band of Weird Bandits. Come on, Noël; you can finish the poetry up here.”

“It’s about him,” said Noël gloomily, “when he’s gone back to——” (Oswald will not give the name of Archibald’s school for the sake of the other boys there, as they might not like everybody who reads this to know about there being a chap like him in their midst.) “I shall do it up in an envelope and put a stamp on it and post it to him, and——”

“Haste!” cried Alice. “Bard of the Bandits, haste while yet there’s time.”

So we tore upstairs and put on our slippers and socks over them, and we got the high-backed chair out of the girls’ bedroom, and the others held it steady while Oswald agilitively mounted upon its high back and opened the trap-door and got up into the place between the roof and the ceiling (the boys in “Stalky & Co.” found this out by accident, and they were surprised and pleased, but we have known all about it ever since we can remember).

Then the others put the chair back, and Oswald let down the rope ladder that we made out of bamboo and clothes-line after uncle told us the story of the missionary lady who was shut up in a rajah’s palace, and some one shot an arrow to her with a string tied to it, and it might have killed her I should have thought, but it didn’t, and she hauled in the string and there was a rope and a bamboo ladder, and so she escaped, and we made one like it on purpose for the loft. No one had ever told us not to make ladders.

The others came up by the rope-ladder (it was partly bamboo, but rope-ladder does for short) and we shut the trap-door down. It is jolly up there. There are two big cisterns, and one little window in a gable that gives you just enough light. The floor is plaster with wooden things going across, beams and joists they are called. There are some planks laid on top of these here and there. Of course if you walk on the plaster you will go through with your foot into the room below.

We had a very jolly game, in whispers, and Noël sat by the little window, and was quite happy, being the bandit bard. The cisterns are rocks you hide behind. But the jolliest part was when we heard Archibald shouting out, “Hullo! kids, where are you?” and we all stayed as still as mice, and heard Jane say she thought we must have gone out. Jane was the one that hadn’t got her letter, as well as having her apron inked all over.

Then we heard Archibald going all over the house looking for us. Father was at business and uncle was at his club. And we were there. And so Archibald was all alone. And we might have gone on for hours enjoying the spectacle of his confusion and perplexedness, but Noël happened to sneeze—the least thing gives him cold and he sneezes louder for his age than any one I know—just when Archibald was on the landing underneath. Then he stood there and said—

“I know where you are. Let me come up.”

We cautiously did not reply. Then he said:

“All right. I’ll go and get the step-ladder.”

We did not wish this. We had not been told not to make rope-ladders, nor yet about not playing in the loft; but if he fetched the step-ladder Jane would know, and there are some secrets you like to keep to yourself.

So Oswald opened the trap-door and squinted down, and there was that Archibald with his beastly hair cut. Oswald said—

“We’ll let you up if you promise not to tell you’ve been up here.”

So he promised, and we let down the rope-ladder. And it will show you the kind of boy he was that the instant he had got up by it he began to find fault with the way it was made.

Then he wanted to play with the ball-cock. But Oswald knows it is better not to do this.

“I daresay you’re forbidden,” Archibald said, “little kids like you. But I know all about plumbing.”

And Oswald could not prevent his fiddling with the pipes and the ball-cock a little. Then we went down. All chance of further banditry was at an end. Next day was Sunday. The leak was noticed then. It was slow, but steady, and the plumber was sent for on Monday morning.

Oswald does not know whether it was Archibald who made the leak, but he does know about what came after.

I think our displeasing cousin found that piece of poetry that Noël was beginning about him, and read it, because he is a sneak. Instead of having it out with Noël he sucked up to him and gave him a six-penny fountain-pen which Noël liked, although it is really no good for him to try to write poetry with anything but a pencil, because he always sucks whatever he writes with, and ink is poisonous, I believe.

Then in the afternoon he and Noël got quite thick, and went off together. And afterwards Noël seemed very peacocky about something, but he would not say what, and Archibald was grinning in a way Oswald would have liked to pound his head for.

Then, quite suddenly, the peaceable quietness of that happy Blackheath home was brought to a close by screams. Servants ran about with brooms and pails, and the water was coming through the ceiling of uncle’s room like mad, and Noël turned white and looked at our unattractive cousin and said: “Send him away.”

Alice put her arm round Noël and said: “Do go, Archibald.”

But he wouldn’t.

So then Noël said he wished he had never been born, and whatever would Father say.